(London) Crude prices continued their decline on Thursday, the return of tankers from large shipowners to the Red Sea reassuring the market which feared supply problems in this key area where tensions remain high.
Around 6:20 a.m., the price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in February, which is the last day of trading, fell by 1.05%, to $78.81.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery the same month, lost 1.13%, to $73.27.
“The oil tankers […] having resumed their crossings of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, thanks to the reassuring presence of a US-led maritime team in the region, this helped to allay some immediate concerns about supply problems, ” says Susannah Streeter, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Ships from the CMA-CGM shipowner have indeed returned to the Red Sea after attacks perpetrated by Houthi rebels in Yemen, and those from Maersk will do the same, the two shipping giants said on Wednesday.
“Some ships have transited through the Red Sea” and “we plan to gradually increase the transit of our ships through the Suez Canal” – which connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea – indicated the French group CMA-CGM in a message to its customers, transmitted to AFP.
Maersk is preparing for its part to “resume navigation in the Red Sea towards the east as well as towards the west”, the Danish carrier indicated on Sunday in a press release, and the first cargo ships will use the canal “as quickly as possible”.
“However, tensions remain high,” nuance Mme Streeter. “Crude prices therefore remain largely elevated, especially as the US economy shows signs of resilience, which strengthens the outlook for global demand.”
In addition, investors are awaiting the publication on Thursday of the state of US weekly commercial inventories by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) for the week ended December 22.
The industry’s federation, the American Petroleum Institute (API), estimated Wednesday that crude stocks rose by about 1.84 million barrels last week, and gasoline stocks fell by 482,000 barrels. . However, API data are considered less reliable than those of the EIA.
Analysts for their part are counting on a drop of 2.85 million barrels in commercial crude reserves, and on a slight drop of around 250,000 barrels of gasoline, according to the median of a consensus compiled by Bloomberg.